Killing Time
With The Mastermind Herself, Tina Cousins By:Kage
Alan
PART ONE
Interviewing an artist, any artist, can seem
like a daunting undertaking. Interviewing someone on the scale of,
oh, say, Tina Cousins? Now we’ve gone beyond daunting and into the
realm of potentially intimidating. After all, she’s had
international success working with Sash! on the songs “Mysterious
Times” and “Just Around The Hill”, then again with her solo album,
“Killing Time”. She’s even gone on to become one of the best
selling female solo artists in Australia…and she’s from Britain!
And now? Now she’s returning with her second album, “Mastermind”, a
labor of love and project that has been completely under her control
from Day 1. Sound intimidating yet?
Fortunately, all nightmares prior to the
interview aside, Tina Cousins is absolutely lovely! She not only
possesses a captivating vocal talent, a savvy business sense that
has allowed her to take control of her career and an appreciation
for everything it’s taken to get where she currently is, but she’s
also got a stellar sense of humor. Okay, she’s also drop-dead
gorgeous! She is. And even though I haven’t made her Top 5 or even
Top 10 List of Favorite Authors yet, she put me right at ease as we
chatted away like we were old friends catching up.
Part 1
Kage Alan: I have to apologize…that was a
horrible message you heard on my answering machine earlier.
Tina Cousins: (laughing) You haven’t heard
mine.
KA: I had a longer one and somebody said
“You HAVE to change this and make it short and sweet,” so I said
“fine, now you’re going to get it short and sweet,” which is
what I said when I recorded it. So I get home today and I’m like
“Oh, shit! Tina Cousins heard that awful message…”
TC: Trust me, it’s not that bad. I used to
have people calling me up for a bank—because my number is almost
identical—and my message…I sound like the devil incarnate on mine.
I’m going “This is NOT Such-And-Such Bank. Leave me alone!”
Mine was really quite rude, so I just recently changed it. It
drives you nuts.
KA: I have to tell you that I’ve been
listening to your music since I first heard it back in 1998 during
my first trip to Hong Kong. Did you know that you have a huge
following in Asia?
TC: No. With the releases in Australia,
especially just recently, I’m surprised we didn’t go across Asia.
Normally that’s the general sort of thing that you do, Australia and
Asia at the same time. I was really surprised at where some of the
hits have been. I mean, I’ve become a bit of a computer nerd. I
never used to be, but in the last couple of years, I sit here and
sometimes… Isn’t it terrible? You can sit there for hours and just
get completely engrossed on some of these sites. My manager was
telling me “Don’t read anything, especially about yourself,” because
you’re always going to read good and bad. It’s weird when you read
things about you, but some of the hits I’ve had have been from
places where I’ve never been in my life. It’s amazing to think that
they’ve actually listened to it. It’s gone that far and I haven’t
even released it in that country.
KA: I remember walking into HMV in Hong Kong
where they were playing “Mysterious Time” and asking them “Who is
this?” They told me the vocalist was Tina Cousins and when I asked
if she (you) had done anything else, they told me that you hadn’t
yet and… You’re going to hate this. You’re absolutely going to
hate this.
TC: Go on, then.
KA: Well, they said “She’s a former model.”
TC: (loud laughter)
KA: I read a couple of interviews you’ve
done and anytime the modeling thing comes up, you’re like “I’m going
to kill the publicist who included that bit!”
TC: Yeah. You know what it is? In all
honesty, I did such a tiny bit. It paid the bills for a bit while I
was struggling with singing. They always like to put that in. They
like to sensationalize everything. I suppose it’s just the way it
works, but, God, I’ve been singing forever.
KA: Singing…didn’t you just do some of that
in Australia?
TC: Yeah! I was just doing a tour with this
guy named Anthony Callea. He just won the Australian Idol. He’s a
tiny little guy, but just has the most amazing voice. We went out
to dinner and just got on really, really well, which is good when
you’re touring for seven weeks with somebody. You either get on or
you don’t. The tour gave me a chance, actually, to do stuff other
than just dancy dancy dancy. Because, obviously as much as I love
it and I do it—and being a typical girly, which I am—it’s really
great to calm things down a bit when we do a track called “Tomorrow
Is Tomorrow”, which is from the new album. It’s just me, a mic
stand, all the lights go out except for spotlight, and just to sing
with a piano… That’s it. It’s really beautiful. It’s what you
always long for as a singer.
I’m hoping, actually, the videos for “Wonderful
Life” and “Come To Me” are getting played quite a lot in America. I
wonder if you’ve seen them anywhere?
KA: (meekly) You know, I haven’t.
TC: It’s been taken on by a company that
basically supplies all the videos and things for clubs, bars and
restaurants. They’re treating it as an “A” list thing, so it’s
across the board, which is great. Actually, the first time I ever
came to America--I went to LA. and then San Francisco--I didn’t know
what to expect. To be honest, I really thought “I’m a British
artist doing dance. There’s no way that anyone is going to know who
I am or know the tracks or anything.” That’s really what I thought
and the reaction I got when I was there was absolutely gobsmacked.
I did a tiny signing in a little record store with a line that went
two or three times around the block with people buying the import.
The gigs I did that night, they knew every word to every song. It
was the most…you can’t describe things like that. If you’ve done
loads of promotion in a country, loads of interviews and all that,
then you sort of think “okay” and you hope that that will happen.
But when you’ve done nothing and you get there and it happens, then
it’s completely different. It does actually blow you away.
The gigs I did in San Francisco…I mean…I’m not
being funny, 10,000 gay guys all with their tops off. (laughing)
It’s like “Life is so unfair!” You have no idea. They’re all
gorgeous and I’m thinking “None of them fancy me.” It was just
brilliant and I remember coming back and telling the record company
“My God! We’ve got to do something. You don’t understand. I was
there. You should see the reaction that these songs were getting.”
And I remember them saying “Don’t be stupid. Forget it. Nothing’s
going to happen.” And then I think we sold about 10,000 copies just
on import. It doesn’t sound like a lot to some people, but
considering we did no promotion, we had no record company and we
sold that, it’s not bad.
KA: The nice thing is that once you’ve got a
gay fanbase, once you’ve got their attention, word spreads like
wildfire and they’re with you for life.
TC: Oh, they are! And this is what I was
saying, actually, yesterday. I did an interview with an Australian
magazine and we were talking about that. The interviewer asked “So
why do you think you have a gay following?” It’s a really difficult
question to answer because… I don’t know. I mean…I’m told I’m very
camp. (laughing) I don’t know whether it’s the fact that, to be
honest, I think sometimes that the normal audience, the popular
audience let’s just say, they listen too much to what’s shoved down
their throats and what they’re told to like. I just found that on
the gay scene, if the track was good and they liked your vocal, then
they bought it. They didn’t have to have 10,000 magazines telling
them it was good or big TV or a million pound launch. If it was a
good track, they went for it and, unfortunately, sometimes--not all
the time, but sometimes--in the straight scene, that doesn’t
happen. It’s a bit of a shame because at the end of the day, if
it’s a good track and you like it, you buy it. You know? It’s not
because you’ve been told that it’s going to be the next big thing.
KA: I think you hit it right on the head
with that one.
TC: It’s hard for every artist, especially when
you haven’t got a giant million pound album launch and so many
people behind you. It isn’t like that for me either, so every
little tiny thing counts and it makes a tremendous difference to me
when I know that I have people who are really supportive.
I financed this album myself. The project
belongs to me, Tina Cousins Limited. I’m quite proud that, when I
turn the CD over, it’s got Copyright Tina Cousins. It’s quite a
nice thing to think that it belongs to me. I can’t have a record
company tell me what to do anymore and I’m my own boss, which is a
big thing in this industry.
KA: One thing I’ve been very curious about
because it has been such a long time between “Killing Time” and
“Mastermind”, what happened? I started to wonder if we were ever
going to hear from Tina again.
TC: It was really horrible. I
technically got dropped from Jive Records, which, as any artist
knows, is horrible. You go into a real deep “Oh, my God. What am I
going to do?” And I actually did get quite depressed. It’s quite
shocking when you hear those words and the most shocking thing about
it at the time was that I was #5 in the UK charts and I’d recouped
big time. All I know is that Pete Waterman, who I was originally
signed to, was having fall-outs with the record label and that’s why
it all happened. That’s what I’ve been told now, but at the time I
knew nothing.
KA: So it was politically motivated?
TC: It was, which is really bad. We were
already halfway through recording the next album. I then got into a
deal with some guys and thought this is going to be great. For 2 ½
years and they did nothing, absolutely nothing, and the frustration
is unbelievable. Everybody knows it takes a long time to build
something up, especially when you haven’t got a very big label
behind you to give you that megabucks push. It took me a few years
to get to the stage where I was being able to travel around the
US…and I don’t mean that to sound big-headed. You know, it took me
a bloody long time to get there and I loved every second of it! It
was wonderful and then to have someone take that away from you and
also not let you do anything with anyone else was just a nightmare.
KA: Especially because there was nothing you
could have done necessarily to prevent it?
TC: Exactly. It was taken out of my hands, so
for 2 ½ years I wasn’t doing gigs, I couldn’t record with anyone
else, any deal offer I got I couldn’t take…it was just awful. And
then, obviously, you know, if you haven’t had a track out for like 2
½ years, then when you do get out that door trying to get another
record deal, it’s even harder. Then it takes another year to get
the deal and another year to do the album. So, when I held that
album in my hand, “Mastermind”, it was like “Finally!”
The biggest gig I did in Sydney when the album
first came out, in front of like 4,500 people, Sanity Records, who
was supposed to be turning up with stock, turned up with nothing.
Not one album, not one single, CD, nothing. I never lose my temper,
but that night, I really lost it. I said “Guys! What the, excuse
my French, dit-dit-dit is going on? You know, this is your product
as well, technically, because we’ve signed you to market it.” I
reckon could have easily sold about 800 copies of the album that
night, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could mean the
difference of going up ten places in the chart. Singing all sounds
so glamorous and gorgeous and, trust me, there are moments when you
think “this is great!”, but also moments when you’re like “Oh, God.
What am I doing?”
